Well, it’s finally here – and everyone hates it. It’s the new London 2012 Olympics logo, designed – at a cost of £400,000 (or $A1.28 million) to represent the separate areas of the city all working together to make an organic whole, which is nevertheless supporting the somewhat hypertrophied East End.

Even before it was up, there were 10,000 signatures on an online petition calling for its abolition (it now has 50,000), hundreds of alternative designs have sprung up, and Mayor Ken Livingstone, sniffing the wind, said he wouldn’t have paid a penny for it.

   

Separated at birth 1: London 2012 logo and Ian Dury of Blockheads fame

Now it’s received the ultimate accolade – it’s lethal. A moving version (ie. in motion not deeply stirring) of the image shown on TV has reportedly set off more than 22 epileptic seizures in viewers, causing two to go to hospital.

   

Separated at birth 2: London 2012 logo, fat white jump suit era Elvis, marooned-in-80s-Pretty in Pink maven Molly Ringwald

The version has now been withdrawn, but there’s questions about how it got to air in the first place, since all images are meant to be pre-tested for propensity to set off seizures.

    

Separated at birth 3: London 2012 logo, Teddy Boy c.1960, and/or l’homme elephante

Will it last till 2012 – probably. But it’s a measure of how things have changed that you can’t just impose a dumb logo on people anymore, and refer to the juju of ‘design consultancy’. Since millions now whack together invites, etc using photoshop and other packages, they can demonstrate what an overpaid non-job it frequently is.

    

Oh, and there’s also the fact that it actually looks like the No.30 bus blown apart in 7/7 – just as the Munich ’72 Olympics logo looked like a pretty stylish explosion. And remember how well that went …